"Eddy's Slice Of Sunshine" (Article from The Sunday Times [of London] 12th June 2005)

June 12, 2005

Eddy's slice of sunshine

When Eddy Grant fell for a plantation house, he didn’t know he was buying the site of Barbados’ first anti-slavery revolt. After fulfilling his vow to make it beautiful, and creating a world-famous recording studio, he tells Jacqui Goddard of The Sunday Times why it’s time to move on

When he arrived in Barbados from Britain 24 years ago, it was not the smoothest of transitions for singer-musician Eddy Grant.The house he had hoped to buy fell through, his wife and four children were still thousands of miles away in London, and his record company was pressuring him for his next album. And British Airways had lost all his luggage, including song books containing years’ worth of carefully crafted lyrics.

Then, just as things might have seemed hopeless, he embarked on a love affair that was to endure for nearly a quarter of a century.

Bayleys — a historic plantation house and 30-acre estate with views across the southeast of the island, rippling fields of sugar cane and, in the distance, the silver-blue shimmer of the Caribbean sea — found a place in Grant’s heart. He bought it without hesitation.

"There’s something special about this place. It has given me very, very great inspiration," he says, relaxing in a gazebo in the garden.

Now, having decided that it is time to sell up and move on once again, Grant, 57, has put Bayleys on the market for £19m. But there will be memories to take away, as well as an eight-figure cheque. Everything from teaching his youngest daughter to swim in the large square pool, to the day Sting turned up unannounced at the front gate, and the time the Rolling Stones came to stay.Then there is the music. It was here in Grant’s Blue Wave recording studios located in the coach house, away from the main house, that most of his famous hits were born, including the 1980s chart hits I Don’t Wanna Dance, Electric Avenue and Gimme Hope Jo’anna. It was here, too, that he mentored local artists and spawned a whole new genre of music known as ringbang.

Most important of all, however, is the pride he takes in having preserved and enhanced what is arguably the most culturally important property in the former British colony of Barbados.

Built in 1719 by Joseph Bayley, one of the island’s white plantocracy, the 444-acre estate thrived on slave labour from west Africa. On April 14, 1816 — Easter Sunday — 400 slaves staged an uprising, led by a young man named Bussa. The insurrection rapidly spread to neighbouring parishes, leaving a quarter of the island’s cane crop in flames as the West India Regiment moved to crush it. When the revolt was over, one white man was dead — and about 1,000 blacks.

Despite its failure, the rebellion served as a milestone in the fight for emancipation and, in 1834, slavery was abolished in British colonies.

Grant knew nothing of the history of Bayleys when he bought it for a price he will reveal only as being less than $1m. "They said, ‘Eddy, you don’t know it yet, but you have bought the sanctum sanctorum of Barbados’ culture’," Grant recalls. "I was amazed."

"I made a vow at the time to make it beautiful," he says, proudly. "Here were young people, some not so young, who obviously wanted to live, but chose to die so that others like myself could enjoy a reasonable standard of living — and that’s a marvellous thing."

Beneath the lofty ficus tree opposite his front door there now stands a monument dedicated to Bussa and those who fought for their freedom at his side. A second is mounted on the wall of the tiny white chapel in the garden.

Located close to the island’s secluded and ruggedly scenic east coast, Bayleys has 15 bedrooms: five in the main house, four in a single-storey block in the grounds and six in the coach house, which also houses the recording studio.

Getting the latter up and running meant removing the trees that had grown straight through the roof, then raising the floor, creating a second storey and stripping layers of plaster from the walls to reveal the original stone.

The changes created the perfect acoustic environment. Elvis Costello, Dave Stewart, Julio Iglesias and the Happy Mondays all recorded there. Memories of the day that Sting arrived unannounced at the garden gate bring a fond smile. Fresh from disbanding the Police, he had flown in to check out the studio for his debut solo album in 1984, The Dream of the Blue Turtles.

"Sting walked into the studio, clicked his fingers a few times, said ‘Great vibe, great vibe’, ran outside, jumped in the swimming pool fully clothed, then went straight back to the plane wet," Grant chuckles.

The back of the album cover shows the singer leaping around on Grant’s terrace, a distinctive mahogany tree in the background. It has been known on the estate ever since as "Sting’s Tree".

Topping the list of visitors towards the end of the 1980s were the Rolling Stones. Keith Richards christened one of the rooms in the studio block the Voodoo Lounge — a name that was to grace one of their albums years later.

Overhauling Bayleys took "millions" and an initial task force of 60 men. Grant flew over the foreman who had overseen construction at his previous home in Islington, north London, along with a cabinet-maker who spent the next three years doing all the woodwork.

Other tasks included laying a new terrace using marble sent from Italy, clearing acres of overgrown land and rebuilding the gardens with hundreds of tons of earth.

Pink and white bougainvillea bushes now grace the grounds, which include a tennis court, and there is an orchard that Grant planted from scratch, with mango, pomegranate, cherry, avocado, and a fruit from Costa Rica that "looks like Marmite and tastes like ice cream".

Inside the main house, stately chandeliers drip from the ceilings and the parquet floors gleam with polished greenheart and purple-heart wood shipped from Guyana.

In the corridors stand trophies commemorating Grant’s 40 years of musical achievements, which began when he formed the Equals in 1965, with whom he scored his first No 1 hit, Baby Come Back.

"I have arrived at a time in my life when I have done what I consider is the best that I can do for this place," Grant says, stressing that he wants Bayleys to pass into responsible hands that will continue to preserve its history.

The £19m price tag has raised eyebrows on Barbados, where an old plantation estate of that size might usually fetch half the amount. Porters Great House, a plantation home on the west coast, just north of Holetown, was on the market for about four years at £3.5m before it sold last year.Built in 1735 and latterly owned by brewery heir Murtogh Guinness, it needed work and is smaller than Bayleys, with six bedrooms and set on 23 acres — but, unlike Bayleys, it is right on the sea.

Grant and his agents, Island Villas, argue that there is more to Bayleys, however, than bricks and mortar. Lynn Hambrick of Altman Real Estate, another agent on the island, agrees: "It may sound a lot, but then you can’t put a value on that kind of history."

Grant laments the fact that the government of Barbados has failed to snap up the property and take it in hand as a national treasure.

"I’ll be sad to leave, but it’s like my relationship with art," he adds. "Years ago, I wanted to collect art; today, I realise that it’s better to see art. You don’t have to own it to appreciate it."

Bayley’s Plantation is for sale through Savills (020 7016 3740, www.savills.co.uk) and Island Villas (00 1 246 432 4627, www.island-villas.com)